As shown in FIG. 1, a conventional welding wire container 100 includes a cylindrical outer shell 110 made of paper sheets stacked into several layers, a circular plywood base plate 120 fitted into a lower opening of the outer shell 110 and upper and lower seam-welded steel fixtures 130a and 130b fitted around the upper and lower ends of the outer shell 110.
An upper end of the outer shell 110 is rolled down into the outer shell 110 by using the upper seam-welded steel fixture 130a, and a lower end of the outer shell 110 is rolled up into the outer shell 110 by using the lower seam-welded steel fixture 130b to form a fitting projection 132 so that the circular base plate 120 may not slip downward. Also the conventional welding wire container 100 includes an inner shell 140 within the outer shell 110. A steel disk 142 is pushed into a lower opening of the inner shell 140, and bonded thereto via a high-strength adhesive. Then the steel disk 142 has been bonded to the circular base plate 120 via the high-strength adhesive or coupled to the circular base 120 via a bolt 144a and a net 144b so as to fix the inner shell 140.
A lid 150 is mounted on the upper fixture 130a in the upper end of the outer shell 110 while wrapping the upper end of the fixture 130a therein. The container includes a ring member 160 for wrapping an outer periphery of the lid 150 to securely fix the lid 150 to the upper fixture 130a. The ring member 160 has a clamp 162 for fixing both ends thereof.
However, the conventional container 100 is disadvantageously complicated in manufacture. Further, in discarding any exhausted container, the container is not disassembled. In particular, it is further troublesome since the welding wire container 100 is in the form of a large capacity vessel. That is to say, when the exhausted container 100 is stored for a certain time period before discarded, the container 100 occupies a large area of storage site since it has a large capacity. Further, transportation of the conventional container 100 always confronts a problem of excessive transportation cost.
Since the conventional container 100 is rarely disassembled in discard, container 100 is mostly incinerated and only remaining steel portions are retreated. Treatment efficiency is very poor since even a large-sized incinerator can treat only 1 or 2 containers. Sometimes, a weight is hung on a large crane to compress the container 100 and reduce the volume thereof before incinerating the container 100. However, the adhesive sticking to the inner shell 140 of the container and so on releases poisonous gas and smoke during incineration thereby inducing air pollution as a problem.
Of course, though the container 100 can be collected and reused, collection and reuse are not practical since it is expensive to collect empty containers and the used containers may have been damaged in use or contain moisture inadequate for reuse. Although some containers are clean in appearance, they are rarely reused owing to doubtful strength and so on.